Syrian regime ‘seizes’ half of rebel parts of Aleppo: monitor
Call for ceasefire as 31,500 residents displaced
ALEPPO, Syria, Dec 2, (Agencies): Syrian government forces have recaptured half of rebel-held territory in Aleppo since launching a devastating offensive for the city in mid-November, a monitoring group said Friday.
Troops and allied militia have overrun all of Aleppo’s northeast and are now chipping away at the far eastern districts of the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
On Friday, regime forces “consolidated their control” over two eastern districts and were pushing further into the city to squeeze the shrinking rebel enclave, said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.
“After the recent advances, the regime is comfortably in control of half of former rebel territory in the city’s east,” Abdel Rahman told AFP.
Intermittent clashes on Friday rocked a block of residential buildings on Aleppo’s eastern edges, where advancing regime forces have sought to secure the road towards the airport.
Clashes
AFP’s correspondent in east Aleppo said ferocious clashes could be heard in the Tariq al-Bab district, where regime forces were advancing on Thursday.
Civilians had already totally emptied the adjacent neighbourhood of Al-Shaar, where a few rebels manned positions in the streets.
Al-Shaar’s vegetable stalls — empty for months because of a devastating government siege — now laid smashed to pieces because of heavy artillery fire on the neighbourhood.
Since Saturday, at least 50,000 have sought refuge in the government-held west or in the Kurdish-held enclave between the two sectors.
And more than 300 civilians, including dozens of children, have been killed in Aleppo’s east since the regime began its offensive on Nov 15.
Retaliatory rocket fire has also killed 55 civilians in government-held territory, according to an Observatory toll.
The escalating violence has been met with international outrage, including a UN warning that east Aleppo could become “a giant graveyard”.
The UN said Friday an estimated 31,500 residents have been displaced following Syrian government advances into the besieged eastern Aleppo enclave this weekend, as government media reported from those newly-captured areas, demonstrating its restoration and resettlement efforts there.
The advance of government and allied troops was one of the most dramatic shifts in the conflict now in its sixth year, as their troops marched into areas controlled by the opposition since 2012. Losing eastern Aleppo would cost the opposition its most significant urban presence.
As the government advances, airstrikes and shelling continued, rendering the situation in the besieged area even more direful. The UN and rights groups have urged for a pause to allow humanitarian access to the enclave’s estimated 275,000.
Meanwhile, world leaders paid lip service to calls for a cease-fire. There were no signs that one would materialize soon.
The Turkish and German foreign ministers were among those who called for a ceasefire in Aleppo during their visits to Beirut on Friday.
Speaking in Beirut at a joint press conference with his Lebanese counterpart Friday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said a cessation of hostilities should be announced “as soon as possible, immediately.”
Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier also called for “temporary truces” in Syria to allow for a humanitarian corridor.
Fighting however continued on the edge of the eastern Aleppo enclave, as allied government troops made progress in their advance on the southern and eastern fronts. Meanwhile, rebel rockets striking government controlled areas of Aleppo killed four Friday, according to state media.
Over the weekend, allied government troops advanced from the northern side, capturing nearly half of the 45-square kilometer enclave (17 square miles) and sending the local population fleeing.
Most of those displaced fled to government and Kurdish-held areas in western Aleppo, separated only by roads and deserted buildings. Many were also displaced inside rebel-held parts of the city, cramming into already crowded and damaged areas in south and central eastern Aleppo.
Syrian state media reported from the government-controlled areas. State broadcaster al-Ikhabirya TV showed hundreds of displaced people sitting on rain-soaked streets and interviewed the newly-displaced residents lodged in empty buildings pockmarked with bullets. Their fresh laundry hung on the walls overlooking the streets. The state-owned channel showed dozens of the displaced people waving Syrian flags from green government buses.
The Syrian government has been keen to show it is restoring normalcy to the shell-shocked community following the swift restoration of government control to areas held by the opposition for four years. Syrian officials visited the newly-captured areas as workers were filmed clearing debris.
An Ikhbariya broadcaster said work is underway to soon reopen a road linking the eastern and western parts of the city, disused for years. He also interviewed newly-resettled residents, who spoke of rebel abuses.
One displaced woman interviewed in the government-held Jibreen district said her son was shot dead as he fled rebel areas. The woman, who didn’t give her name, said she would carry a gun to avenge her son’s killing. She praised the Syrian army and said that while in rebel-held areas her family had no food or drink and was treated badly.
“My son Bashar died hungry,” she said in tears.
Others interviewed in the newly captured Hanano district complained of being mistreated on suspicion of cooperating with the Syrian army, including one who said he was detained. One resident complained of a lack of heating facilities in their new settlement.
Opposition and activists had also accused the government of shelling displaced Syrians who were fleeing the government advances. At least 50 people were killed in artillery shelling of the rebel-held district to which they were fleeing.
The Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that a total of 26,500 people had fled to government-held Jibreen, east of Aleppo, and Kurdish-held Sheik Massoud. Another 5,000 were displaced within eastern Aleppo.
Spokesman Jens Laerke on Friday cited reports that some men and boys trying to enter government-controlled western Aleppo had been detained by government troops. London-based rights group Amnesty International said it too had received reports of Syrian security forces detaining men in Aleppo areas recaptured by the government and warned of the potential for revenge attacks. The reports could not be independently confirmed and a Syrian military official said screening measures were in place to prevent “terrorists” infiltrating the civilians.
Expressed
UN officials have expressed concern over the plight of civilians caught in the fighting in Aleppo, and called for more access to the eastern part of the city that has been besieged since July. There have been no operational hospitals in eastern Aleppo for nearly two weeks after they were bombed.
Meanwhile, the Russian military said it has been the only source of food, medicine and other supplies for 90,000 residents of the city’s neighborhoods seized by the Syrian army, criticizing the UN for dragging its feet on delivering humanitarian aid there.
The UN has said local partners have provided hot meals and drinkable water to those displaced in government-controlled Jibreen and urged the Syrian government to ensure that UN staff are able to deploy unrestricted and safely across Aleppo.
A senior Syrian opposition official accused Russia on Friday of procrastinating in talks with rebels over Aleppo, signalling no progress in diplomacy which rebels hoped would ease dire conditions in the city where they are in danger of defeat.
Buoyed by its rapid capture of several whole neighbourhoods, the government on Friday took journalists on an escorted tour of the ruined northeast Aleppo districts which fell on Sunday and Monday, and which the army is sweeping for mines.
The rebels’ talks with Russia, the most powerful ally of President Bashar al-Assad, in Ankara point to the bad set of options they face. The government assault aims to take Aleppo by the time U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
“There is severe procrastination by the Russians,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the secret nature of the talks. “There is absolutely no seriousness,” he added. However, analysts have said rebels may have to agree to withdraw, depending on the terms.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at a news conference in Rome, acknowledged contacts with the Syrian opposition and added that “a military solution to the Syria conflict does not exist”.
The talks have been going for about two weeks and are the first between Russia and rebel groups who say they have been abandoned by the West.
Moscow’s warplanes have played a critical role in helping to turn around Assad’s fortunes from summer 2015, supporting the offensive against Aleppo by the Syrian army and its allies — Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Shi’ite militias from Lebanon and Iraq.
Some rebel groups are supported by the United States, Turkey and Gulf monarchies, but Syria’s insurgents also include jihadist militants such as the former al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, previously known as the Nusra Front.
The front lines around the rebelheld sector of Aleppo have mostly held steady since Monday, when insurgents were forced from more than a third of the area they have controlled for several years in an assault by the Syrian army and its allies.
However, one Syria expert said that although the smaller area they occupied should make defending it easier for rebels, the cumulative impact of intense bombardment could force them to make a deal to withdraw, depending on the terms offered.
“The opposition’s ability to defend itself under this offensive is very much in question, and it’s easy to imagine that an eventual withdrawal seems increasingly likely,” said Noah Bonsey of the International Crisis Group.
The army’s advances have allowed it to reopen the northern section of the city’s ring road, state TV reported, a move that may improve its transit and communications options near the new front line on another stretch of that highway near the airport.